Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Tea party movement celebrates fifth anniversary with party in Washington

ne_140227_teaparty.jpg

Ronald Frodelius of Fayetteville flies an American flag upside-down as "a sign of distress for our country" during the April 15, 2009, Tax Day Tea Party protest outside of the James M. Hanley Federal Building in Syracuse.
(Post-Standard file photo)

Tea Party Patriots members are expected to look back on the movement's impact and the road ahead as they celebrate its fifth anniversary Thursday with a party in Washington, D.C.

Republican senators Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Ted Cruz of Texas are expected to attended the celebration at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill. So are representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Steve King of Iowa, Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Louie Gohmert of Texas, and Matt Salmon of Arizona, the Washington Times reports.

Featured speakers will include talk radio host Mark Levin and Jenny Beth Martin, the movement's co-founder.

CBS News traces the tea party's beginning to a rant against the Obama administration's mortgage modification proposal delivered on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by CNBC anchor Rick Santelli, a critic of federal bailouts to rescue the faltering economy.

Neither the media nor the politicians knew what to make of the grassroots movement at first, the Washington Post recalled. During its first big national protest on Feb. 27, 2009, supporters in St. Louis tossed tea into the Mississippi while those in Nashville wore tea bags.

The movement may not go anywhere, the New York Post opined the following day, "but it sure gives overtaxed, tapped-out folks a place to let off a little steam."

Less than two months later, a Tea Party protest on April 15, 2009 -- income tax filing day -- drew hundreds of people bearing signs and flags to the federal building in downtown Syracuse.

By August of that year, tea partiers were rallying against President Barack Obama's health care proposal. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, recoiling from the movement's influence, switched from the Republican Party to the Democrats, only to later lose his seat, the Washington Post said in a catalog of memorable moments in tea party history.

Today the Tea Party Patriots claims more than 3,000 voluntarily affiliated chapters around the country. The movement has brought to the forefront political figures such as Bachmann, Cruz and Paul and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

"The rise of the tea party movement is the most important development in politics since the advent of the Reagan Democrat," Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told the Washington Times. He added:

"Today, the American tea party represents the intellectualism of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan. These men believed in the citizenry and not the state . . . The intellectuals of the American tea party don't confuse sophistication with intellectualism. They know better even if the elites do not. The tea party also knows that it is impractical, indeed anti-intellectual, to try to govern this vast and diverse country from one corrupt city by the Potomac River."

It was after the 2010 midterm congressional elections, when the Republican Party took control of the House, that the tea party made its influence felt, CBS said:

"The act of legislating fundamentally changed: no longer was the debt ceiling increased as a routine matter or budgets approved without heightened scrutiny. Threats of a government shutdown over spending bills finally gave way to an actual government shutdown in October of 2013, spurred on by opposition to the Affordable Care Act."

But the movement's power has created a rift in the Republican Party. Some 43 percent of Republicans identify with the tea party, according to a recent CBS/New York Times survey. Of them, half said they thought Republican candidates were not conservative enough. Meanwhile, more than one-third of non-tea party Republicans said they thought their party's candidates were too conservative.

How much clout the tea party movement retains will be tested beginning March 4, when a series of congressional primaries begins that will pit establishment Republicans against tea party-backed foes, the Wall Street Journal said.

Martin, the movement's co-founder, told CBS that her speech today will reflect on the tea party's accomplishments. But it also will present an agenda for the next five years that will go beyond fiscal conservatism to confront National Security Agency abuses and the Affordable Care Act, she said.

What are your thoughts as the tea party turns 5? Please leave a comment below,